The Lake`s Dubious Gain Is Chicago`s Loss

July 19, 1990|By Charles W. Shabica.

The loss of the Loyola University lakefill project is a tragedy that sends a discouraging message to those who envision a better Chicago.

The shore of Lake Michigan is evolving. Ancient oak trees found in the lake are evidence that 8,000 years ago the lakeshore was 15 miles east of its present position. Two hundred years ago the Illinois shore was mainly eroding bluffs supplying sand to wide sandy beaches, a natural system with a river of sand moving from the eroding bluffs south to Indiana.

Today, the wide natural beaches are gone. In Chicago, they have been replaced by lakefill protected by revetments, harbors protected by breakwaters and engineered beaches protected by steel or rock or concrete structures.

As Chicago grew in the 1800s, commerce was dominant and industry and railrods occupied the lakefront. The tragic Chicago fire of 1871 reawakened the dreams of city planners, street maps were redefined and a new future for Chicago began to emerge. Daniel Burnham had a vision of a lakefront designed for people, not industrial complexes. In 1909, a plan was proposed and evolved that would create a new Chicago shoreline, the results of which make Chicago a great place to live and work: a system of parks and paths, piers and beaches, grassy expanses, lake vistas-all open to the public.

How was that wonderful space created? The system of parks and public land was built on the lakebed in front of Chicago`s commercial/industrial lakefront. Most of the Chicago lakefront is an extraordinarily well engineered public parkland lakefill where no natural beaches exist.

Over the years the Chicago Park District expanded the lakefill to the north but ran out of steam at Hollywood Boulevard, where Lake Shore Drive turns west and the parkland ends. To the north are the neighborhoods of Edgewater and Rogers Park, with Loyola University in between. Except for a few small parks, this two-mile section of Chicago is private, with virtually no public access to the lakefront.

Loyola`s proposed lakefill would have made private land accessible to the public and would have been an important step in the continuation of the Chicago Plan (as recommended by the Chicago Shoreline Protection Commission in 1988).

Loyola entrusted the task of designing its lakefill project to W.F. Baird and Associates, a coastal engineering firm with an international reputation for excellence. The design process was unprecedented in its thoroughness. The 18.5 acres of lake bottom that would have been covered is a sandy, wave- and current-scoured dynamic system inhospitable to lake organisms, as well as people. The shape of the lakefill was carefully modeled and tested in a state- of-the-art facility to assure that whatever sand is moving along shore would bypass the structure and not be trapped. In my 19 years` experience monitoring Illinois lakeshore protection structures, the Loyola design ranked as one of the most thoroughly tested and engineered projects I have seen.

The folks in Edgewater just south of Loyola approved the project and had begun planning for ``the next mile`` to fill the gap between the Chicago parkland and the Loyola parkland. Loyola planned to convert the present lakefront of buildings adjacent to the lake (now inaccessible to the public)

into a park with walkways, fishing and viewing areas, open playfields and an expanded Hartigan beach. There would have been no buildings, and the area would have been fully accessible to the public. The plan represented a new beginning for fulfillment of Burnham`s dream-public access to parkland along the entire Chicago lakefront

It is a mystery, then, why this entire project, already under construction, was scrapped as a result of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen for the Lake Michigan Federation. If one visits the Loyola campus, it is evident that Loyola is not obstructing anything or anyone; in fact, it is making the lake more accessible. The university is building the very same parkland in front of its campus that Burnham envisioned for all of Chicago. This is not an industrial land-grab. It is also not even another Northwestern lakefill where buildings were erected on the fill. This was to be a park, open to the public.

The loss of the Loyola project involves more than 18.5 acres of lakefill. The Lake Michigan Federation claims to have saved the submerged lakebed for our use. There are 22,300 square miles of lakebed in Lake Michigan. There are fewer than 10 square miles of Chicago lakefront parkland. It doesn`t take a rocket scientist to figure out which is more important to Chicago. We have allowed a few individuals, in the name of the public trust and environmental protection, to damage the public good and to tell people with a vision for an improved Chicago: Don`t bother.